CoreOS to join Red Hat to deliver automated operations to all

Red Hat and CoreOS’s relationship began many years ago as open source collaborators developing some of the key innovations in containers and distributed systems, making automated operations a reality. Since that time, we have both become leaders in the communities that are driving these innovations, including Kubernetes, the Open Container Initiative (OCI) and the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF). Today Red Hat announced it has signed a definitive agreement to acquire CoreOS. By joining Red Hat, I believe we will make these important technologies ubiquitous in business and the world.

This is a big day and we reflect on how far we’ve come, and look forward to our future working together at Red Hat. Thank you to the CoreOS family, our customers, partners, and most of all, the open source community for sharing in our mission to make the internet more secure through automated operations. We are thrilled to continue this mission at Red Hat and work to accelerate bringing enterprise-grade containerized infrastructure and automated operations to customers.

Reflecting on the past five years and the rise of containers

It is humbling to reflect on the momentum around containers and distributed systems today, thanks to the concerted efforts between CoreOS, Red Hat, and many, many other open source companies and contributors alike.

Since our start in 2013, we have been committed to open source. It was at a time when only a small minority of the infrastructure industry had considered containers and long before the conception of Kubernetes. Early on, we jumped in with both feet. It began with the creation of Container Linux, a lightweight Linux open source operating system created for the world of containers, and etcd, the distributed key-value store that has since become the underpinning of modern distributed systems like Kubernetes, and participation in the development of the Docker container ecosystem. From there we created and invested in more than 100 other open source projects, like rkt, flannel, dex and Clair, and were a part of the industry leadership in the creation of OCI and CNCF – working together across this industry to make the baseline for this new way to run infrastructure possible.

Since then, Kubernetes was open sourced by Google, and has exploded in popularity. We bet on it early on both by making substantial open source investment and delivering Tectonic, one of the first enterprise products powered by Kubernetes. Since then, Tectonic has gained significant momentum among some of the top global 2,000 companies.

Onward and upward

We have spent the past five years setting up the open source projects that needed to exist to show the power of automated operations. Now, the major technology industry leaders and cloud providers have invested in this ecosystem. Kubernetes is a leading container orchestration tool for organizations of all sizes, on its way to potentially becoming as ubiquitous as Linux.

We see tremendous opportunity as we join Red Hat given our shared open source philosophies and complementary product portfolios. Like CoreOS, Red Hat is a recognized leader in open source container technology. We look forward to becoming part of the Red Hat family to further accelerate innovation and provide greater value to customers.

A note to existing CoreOS customers

CoreOS will continue to honor all existing customer engagements. Further, existing CoreOS customers will receive a direct email about these changes along with contact information if there are further questions.